Mac OpenOffice debut may be preview

While the Macworld UK article seemed to indicate that OpenOffice 2.0 would “ship” for the Mac this month, a look at the OpenOffice.org Mac timeline reveals that, while the Aqua version will be “presented” next month, an alpha is now scheduled for next January or February. I wouldn’t expect to see it lauded at the January Macworld event, though. Not only does Apple have its own quasi-suite in iWork, but from all accounts it hasn’t reached out very much to the OpenOffice effort. Indeed, much of the difficulty in getting OpenOffice to the Mac is explained in the FAQ of the NeoOffice project that seeks to circumvent the delays:

OpenOffice.org is paid for by Sun Microsystems so its paid staff are most concerned with completing whatever goals Sun Microsystems sets. In comparison, NeoOffice averages less than a million downloads per year and NeoOffice only runs on a platform that Sun Microsystems has rarely released software for. Because of these differences, any Mac OS X work must be coordinated with the OpenOffice.org paid staff to ensure that the Mac OS X work does not conflict with any work on the Windows, Linux, or Solaris platforms.

Sure doesn’t sound like the kind of egalitarianism that the FOSS world generally embraces.